The Al-Hamlet Summit

by Graham Holderness (Author), SulaymanAl-Bassam (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2006

  $14.15

  The room is set up like a conference hall somewhere in the Arab world, or perhaps like the legislative assembly of a small modern state. There are desks with push-button microphones and headsets. Behind, there is a screen, as if someone planned to give a Powerpoint presentation. But the names on the desks are the familiar characters from Hamlet . The setting of Sulayman Al Bassam's powerful, disturbing version of the Hamlet story is a modern Middle-Eastern state whose old king has just died, to be replaced by his brother, a ruthless, westernised dictator who has married the old king's wife to legitimise his rule, and calls his regime a new democracy .